Politics – Page 1093 – Politics Plus

Komen Revisited

Posted by TomCat at 12:04 am Politics

Oct 122014

Last night I saw a Care2 Article by Cal. Since the pink ribbons started polluting US charity again, I’ve been considering a repost of an article I wrote 2 1/2 years ago, and seeing Cal’s lit the fire. Thanks Cal. It’s important how Komen’s political duplicity disqualifies them as an authentic charity. I originally published the following on 2/3/2012.

The decision to defund Planned Parenthood by Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure is especially hurtful to poor women, who have no health services other than Planned Parenthood. I am convinced that they are not being honest about their claimed reason, and that their real reason is to support the ongoing Republican vendetta against Planned Parenthood. I fully support aid for breast cancer screenings for women, and am happy to tell you that there is a way we can support breast cancer screenings for all women, but leave the Komen foundation to their political intrigues.

Tuesday's news that Susan G. Komen for the Cure is ending funding it provided to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings has led to increased scrutiny of Komen's staff, which—as I reported previously—includes a federal lobbyist who pledged to defund Planned Parenthood while campaigning for governor of Georgia.

Komen's founder is pretty conservative, too. Komen CEO Nancy G. Brinker, who founded the foundation in memory of a sister who died from breast cancer, was the chief protocol officer for the United States from 2007 to 2009 under the George W. Bush administration, and before that served as his ambassador to Hungary.

Brinker is also a major Republican donor, and has given more than $175,000 to Republican candidates and the Republican National Committee since 1990, according to donor data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Her late husband, Norman Brinker, was the chairman of Brinker International Restaurants, which owns the chains Chili's, Maggiano's, and Macaroni Grill. Norman Brinker gave more than $440,000 to Republicans between 1990 and his death in 2009…

Inserted from <Mother Jones>

Komen’s supposed reason for this is that Planned Parenthood is under a Congressional investigation, and they do not fund organizations under investigation, they say. Well that investigation was called by one lone congressman, Cliff Stearns (R-FL). He has done nothing to follow it up. Furthermore, Penn State is involved in a serious criminal investigation, but Komen still funds Penn State’s Hershey Medical Center. That’s why I discount their claim.

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) criticized Komen on the House floor.

3plannedparenthoodspending

97% of what Planned Parenthood does has nothing whatsoever to do with abortion, but if you oppose abortion, the contraception that Planned Parenthood provides prevents dozens of abortions every day. I wanted to help. I spoke to Charles Nilme at the Columbia Willamette office of Planned Parenthood, here in Portland, and donated $20. That’s a tiny donation, but I’m quite poor. I asked Charles, if I could target that donation to breast cancer screening, and he told me that I could.

Therefore, we all can support breast cancer screening for women without contributing to Komen’s agenda that opposes women’s rights. We can donate to Planned Parenthood directly and tell them how we want it used. I did, and I hope you will too. You can donate online to Planned Parenthood, or get the telephone number of your local center there.

Rachel Maddow interviewed Congresswoman Diana DeGette on this topic. Let me leave you with their thoughts.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Open Thread–10/12/2014

Posted by TomCat at 12:03 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 122014

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 174. It’s late evening, and I’m usually not watching this late, but a it’s been one of those days that everything gets done but not at it’s normal time. That’s partly because od volunteer work, and partly because I took tine out to watch the Oregon Ducks Californicate UCLA. Tomorrow is a Holy Day in the Church of the Ellipsoid orb, and my Broncos service will be televised here at 10:00 AM. May the holy Orb bless them with stinger missiles.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:44 (average 4:23). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: This is a special Upworthy series about encouraging action on climate change. Made Possible by Planet Victory. Read more.

Just wait till 4:10 to find out why this amazing footage is so very scary. (Hint: climate change.)

You can’t argue with that, except the Republicans so anyway. They claim, lamely, that they’re not scientists.

From Daily Kos: Walmart is an environmental disaster, despite its claim to be moving toward renewable energy. But Walmart’s majority stockholders, the Walton family, are going above and beyond, actively working against rooftop solar power, according to a new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

The Waltons’ anti-solar efforts fall into two categories. Since 2010, they’ve given at least $4.5 million in donations to organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC] and Americans for Prosperity [Koch] that are trying to weaken clean energy policies at the state level. These donations are part of a widespread corporate attack on policies that allow homeowners to use rooftop solar panels not just to power their own houses, but to sell excess solar power to utility companies. These utility companies might not be against solar power, but they’re definitely against losing business to household-level solar.

Thou shalt not Wal-Fart!

From NY Times: More than half of the general election advertising aired by outside groups in the battle for control of Congress has come from organizations that disclose little or nothing about their donors, a flood of secret money that is now at the center of a debate over the line between free speech and corruption.

The advertising, which has overwhelmingly benefited Republican candidates, is largely paid for by nonprofit groups and trade associations, some of which are established with the purpose of shielding wealthy individuals and corporations that contribute.

What is now happening is exactly want the Fascist Five Injustices at SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) said would NOT happen when they illegally legislated that even foreign Corporate money may drown out human speech. Get Out the VOTE!!

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Shhhh! It’s a Secret!

Posted by TomCat at 12:27 am Politics

Oct 112014

Everywhere you turn you hear bad news about the economy. According to conventional wisdom, we are spending like there is no tomorrow and running up record budget deficits. In the process, we arwe destroying the economy. Is this true? What’s really going on? Shhhh! It’s a secret!

What if they balanced the budget and nobody knew or cared?

O.K., the federal budget hasn’t actually been balanced. But the Congressional Budget Office has tallied up the totals for fiscal 2014, which ran through the end of September, and reports that the deficit plunge of the past several years continues. You still hear politicians ranting about “trillion dollar deficits,” but last year’s deficit was less than half-a-trillion dollars — or, a more meaningful number, just 2.8 percent of G.D.P. — and it’s still falling.

So where are the ticker-tape parades? For that matter, where are the front-page news reports? After all, talk about the evils of deficits and the grave fiscal danger facing America dominated Washington for years. Shouldn’t we be making a big deal of the fact that the alleged crisis is over?

Well, we aren’t, and once you understand why, you also understand what fiscal hysteria was really about.

First, ordinary Americans aren’t celebrating the deficit’s decline because they don’t know about it… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

Click thr4ough to read how Paul Krugman continues to explain how the media focuses on bad news and ignores good news. Of course that’s true. If it bleeds, it leads. However, another dynamic is at work here., as Rachel Maddox explains.

Naturally! The media is parroting Republican lies! But part of the fault lies with Democrats. Those of you who also worship the Holy Ellipsoid Orb are familiar with the Iggy Shuffle and other End Zone Celebrations. Here’s what I mean.

Democrats need Bodacious Barack, Hot Stuff Harry, and Fancy Nancy to get together, spike the ball, and do a good old fashioned end zone dance. Republicans have us outclassed at this. They blow their own horn to claim that their most egregious failures are spectacular successes, while we actually have successes and keep quite.

It’s been a secret too long.

Open Thread–10/11/2014

Posted by TomCat at 12:26 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 112014

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 173. I spent the entire morning researching, and doing paperwork in for my prison volunteer work. I did take a half hour off to bask in the sun, although there was not much. If I play this right, I’ll have time for a nap. If not, I’ll be playing roulette with a keyboard face plant.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:23 (average 5:02). To do it click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Media Matters: Fox News used doctored video of an interview with President Obama to claim his description of briefings he received on the night of the Benghazi attack contrasts with former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s. In reality, their accounts are consistent.

Panetta discussed the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi during a September 7 interview [Faux Noise delinked] with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. The Factor — and subsequently the October 8 edition of Fox & Friends — exploited the interview to revive the debunked claim that Obama didn’t describe the Benghazi attacks as terrorism and conclude "the administration did not want to talk about terror." To make their point, each program featured a clip of the president’s interview with O’Reilly in February in which the Fox host asked the president about the "terror" designation. The clip egregiously omits Obama’s response to the dialogue, in which the president explicitly says, "When somebody is attacking our compound … that’s an act of terror, which is how I characterized it the day after it happened."

Barf Bag Alert!!

Brain-washed sheeple have a warped view of this issue, because what Obama REALLY said landed on the cutting room floor of the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise.

From Daily Kos: There are good cops and then there is an unknown NYPD officer who blatantly robs a man at his birthday party:

Lamard Joye was celebrating his 35th birthday with friends last month near a basketball court in Coney Island, Brooklyn. At some point, the police arrived and stopped a friend of his.

From several feet away, Mr. Joye objected. What happened next is now under investigation by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, which is in possession of a cellphone video of the ensuing confrontation.

The video of the encounter, on Sept. 16 at around 12:20 a.m., shows a police officer steering Mr. Joye against a chain-link fence to pat him down. “Look,” Mr. Joye says. “Look, you see this? Look.” The police officer reaches into Mr. Joye’s pocket, removes what appears to be a folded stack of bills and steps back.

This is no the video with the article. That could not be embedded, but this video is enhanced. This proves that Brooklyn has at least one Republican.

From The New Yorker: As the mystery surrounding the absence of dictator Kim Jong-un deepens, the North Korean government on Wednesday issued an official statement reassuring its citizens that it had “a deep bench of brutal madmen.”

While it offered no comment about the status of Kim, the statement from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) emphasized that “making North Korea an authoritarian horror-drome is not the achievement of one man; it has been and will always be a team effort.”

Andy should tell them not to worry. Our Republican Party can lend them dozens of experienced leaders, who are just as brutal, and just as crazy.

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Republicans on Parade–10/10/2014

Posted by TomCat at 12:43 am Politics

Oct 102014

RepublicansOnParade

Here is the sixty-third article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today’s honoree is Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA). He is so honored for fear mongering with one of the most absurd conspiracy theories to date.

The Department of Homeland Security flatly denied on Wednesday a claim from a California Congressman that the ISIS terror army is quietly slipping into the United States through its porous southern border – and that American border patrol agents have already captured ten of its soldiers.

Republican Duncan Hunter told a Fox News Channel audience on Tuesday that ISIS, the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, is actively infiltrating the U.S.

‘I know that at least ten ISIS fighters have been caught coming across the Mexican border in Texas,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody talking about it.’

But DHS fired back, saying in a statement that Hunter’s claim is ‘categorically false.’

‘The suggestion that individuals who have ties to ISIL have been apprehended at the Southwest border is categorically false, and not supported by any credible intelligence or the facts on the ground,’ a Homeland Security spokesman said in a statement, using the administration’s preferred alternative acronym for the group… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <The Daily Mail>

Rachel Maddow has all the details and covered the story on Debunktion Junction.

Those who cannot access MSNBC video can watch this clip at YouTube.

When this Republican wakes up in the morning, his rooster crows Whack-a-doodle-doo!!

I’ve had my eye on this nutcase for a long time. In 2010, I wrote about his proposal to deport natural born American citizens, Constitution be damned. Also in 2010, I wrote about CREW’s lawsuit of the FEC Republicans for refusing to take action against Duncan, even though they admitted he had violated campaign finance laws.

Duncan needs to be paraded to the unemployment office.

Open Thread–10/10/2014

Posted by TomCat at 12:42 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics, Religion

Oct 102014

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 172. I took an hour of sun-basking this afternoon. Before long there will be only Oregon liquid sunshine. It’s as minor Holy Day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb. My Broncos’ service is not until Sunday, but tonight’s game should be a good one. It’s almost nap time.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:14 (average 5:00). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: G. Yamazawa takes you back to his childhood to share an important lesson he learned.

Very well said by an authentic Buddhist!

From AlterNet: Gay Marriage Will Of Course Lead To Polygamy: Right-wing radio host and activist Erick Erickson predicted [Wing-nut delinked] that “all the people now saying polygamy is different from gay marriage will be polygamy’s chief advocates within the decade.”

Isn’t it ironic that the people actually practicing polygamy are part of the Republican fringe? This is just one of ten crazy Republican Responses to expanding marriage equality. Click through for the other nine.

From TPM: Republican senators are calling on House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to attach spending limits to an Obamacare program in a bill that must pass in the lame-duck session to keep the federal government open.

The strategy carries echoes of the 2013 government shutdown fight waged by the GOP over defunding Obamacare, although with smaller ambitions this time.

Fourteen conservative senators, led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), wrote a letter to Boehner on Wednesday calling on him to use the continuing resolution — which must be enacted by Dec. 11 to avert a shutdown — to prohibit "unappropriated and unauthorized funds" under a market stability mechanism in Obamacare known as risk corridors. The program collects funds from insurers who enroll healthier patients and pays insurers who enroll sicker patients.

Even though some will try to appear reasonable and conciliatory for the election, you know that after the voting is done Republicans will still be seditious saboteurs.

Cartoon: (Barf Bag Alert!!)

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Two of My Favorite Ladies

Posted by TomCat at 12:01 am Politics

Oct 092014

1009MadWar

It’s a rare treat for me to see two of my favorite ladies share the spotlight, so I’m going to do something highly atypical for me. I’m going to shut up and get out of the way. Introducing Elizabeth Warren and Rachel Maddow.

If you cannot watch MSNBC video, here’s the same clip on YouTube.

Warren makes a great case for the Democratic Party. I found it highly relevant that Warren is the Senator most progressives use as a progressive comparison to Democrats we claim are not progressive enough. Didn’t she just make a most excellent case for us to support and vote for those very people?

What should we get out?

Open Thread–10/9/2014

Posted by TomCat at 12:01 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics, Religion

Oct 092014

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 171. Store to Door is coming with groceries, and I have lots of cleaning to do to prepare.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:44 (average 5:28). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: An Ohio man has become infected with misinformation about the Ebola virus through casual contact with cable news, the Centers for Disease Control has confirmed.

Tracy Klugian, thirty-one, briefly came into contact with alarmist Ebola hearsay during a visit to the Akron-Canton airport, where a CNN report about Ebola was showing on one of the televisions in the airport bar. “Mr. Klugian is believed to have been exposed to cable news for no more than ten minutes, but long enough to become infected,” a spokesman for the C.D.C. said. “Within an hour, he was showing signs of believing that an Ebola outbreak in the United States was inevitable and unstoppable.”

Once Klugian’s condition was apparent, the Ohio man was rushed to a public library and given a seventh-grade biology textbook, at which point he “started to stabilize,” the spokesman said.

Andy has a point. It’s a good thing the man was not exposed to the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise. His brain would not have survived long enough to reach the library emergency room.

From Daily Kos: Ellen Bogan was rolling down U.S. 27 in Union County, Indiana when she was pulled over for a traffic violation. The state trooper let her off with a warning, but not before asking some bizarrely unprofessional questions:

Did she have a home church?

Did she accept Jesus Christ as her savior?

Ellen said she felt helpless to leave the traffic stop, even after the warning had been issued:

"The police officer is representing the government … so that means, as a representative, this person, while on duty, while engaged in official action, is basically overstepping and is trying to establish religion."

Bogan, who lives in Huntington, said Hamilton asked her about her faith multiple times during the traffic stop. Because he was a trooper and his police car was still parked behind hers, she said she felt she could not leave or refuse questioning.

"The whole time, his lights were on," Bogan said. "I had no reason to believe I could just pull away at that point, even though I had my warning."

This Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christian abused his authority, violated her Constitutional rights, and should be criminally indicted and blacklisted from service as a police officer everywhere.

From NY Times: Just weeks before elections that will decide control of the Senate and crucial governors’ races, a cascade of court rulings about voting rules, issued by judges with an increasingly partisan edge, are sowing confusion and changing voting procedures with the potential to affect outcomes in some states.

Last week, a day before voting was scheduled to begin in Ohio, the United States Supreme Court split, 5 to 4, to uphold a cut in early voting in the state by one week; the five Republican appointees voted in favor and the four Democratic appointees against. Cases from North Carolina and Wisconsin are also before the court, with decisions expected shortly, while others are proceeding in Texas and Arkansas.

The legal fights are over laws that Republican-led state governments passed in recent years to more tightly regulate voting, in the name of preventing fraud.

Since virtually all actual documented cases of so-called voter fraud have been Republicans getting caught while trying to prove they could get away with it, it is clear that the Republican courts, especially SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) are helping their fellow fascists. Note how the Fascist Five Injustices used the Gay Marriage non-decision to distract us from their efforts to help the Republican Party steal elections. Get Out the VOTE!!

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